My lovely 'As You Like It' Cast (Aren't they all just gorgeous?)

Behold the horribly talented cast of The Acting Factory's 2007 season of 'As You Like It' (Shakespeare By the River). Many thanks to all my fellow thespians for such an energetic and ultimately enjoyable experience. Kisses, love, hugs etc:-) xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Ding dong the bells are gonna chime...

I'm getting married! Oh lordy, what the hell? It should be mentioned that I'm the kind of girl who NEVER expected to get married, never planned on getting married, never planned dresses, invitations, bridesmaids or any of the other blah that goes on, and as a result am somewhat overwhelmed by the staggering amount of work that apparently needs to be done!

Who would have thought? I thought staging a show & organising Symphony Orchestras was challenging, but dammit, this wedding biz is unbelievable!

The etiquette of a wedding alone should be made into a TAFE course. Someone asked me the other day if I'd done a wedding budget yet....a wedding what?! I'm drowning in a whirlwind of venuelaceflowersinvitationsparentsfriendslistsbouquetsbanquetsgiftsthankyousdoIreallyhavetoinviteher

yesi'llmprobablyhaveababyeventuallysostopfriggin'askingnoIhaven'tpickedoutnamesyetordecidedhowto

decoratethenurserydoIhaveahealthcareplan?whatthehelldoesthathavetdowithanything?whatif

Ilookfat?ohmigodIhavetodietoraboutathousandyearssoI'mnotafatbrideisitinappropriateto

photoshopyourweddingphotossoyourteethlookwhiter/straightercelebrantorpriestmorningor

afternoonyouhavetogiveyourguestspresents?why?willeveryonebepissedifidon't?

Anyway, I suspect that I'm not the only potential bride to panic about all this, but how exactly does one run a busy music studio, study nutrition and plan a wedding, home and family? The answer would be to hire the ubiquitous 'wedding planner' with our non-existent budget and even more non-existent savings. Any offers accepted:-)

On a more positive side, I'm marrying my best friend. He's also the kindest man this side of Nirvana and an extraordinarily talented and intelligent individual. I guess I'm still reeling that he actually wants to marry notoriously difficult and prickly little me. Perhaps his major fault is that he really can't see mine! Shush, He doesn't need to know...

Those nutty Japanese and quantum physics...

So, after a long absence I have finally found something interesting enough to share with the world at large (i.e. the 4 or so people who bother to read this blog).
Whilst studying the principles of Homeopathy (part of my course in Nutrition) I came across the interesting (if highly debatable) work of one Dr Masuru Emoto. This dapper little chappie collects water samples from around the country, freezes it in 1ml quantities, lets it gradually unfreeze in -5 degree conditions and photographs the 'snowflake' crystals that form on top of the droplet. Nothing so new there. Snowflakes have been photographed for ages. So pretty 'n stuff. So he comes out with some pretty predictable shots of water from around Japan's rivers, springs, dams and lakes as shown below.

Antarctic Ice From the healing fountain, Lourdes

There's tonnes of shots. Just google it and have a look. Pretty impressive stuff.

Then he went further and photographed fujiwara dam water before and after a prayer and )da da da daaaaaa) the crystal structure CHANGED.

They tried words, 'Love and appreciation', 'I hate you, you make me sick', 'Adolf Hitler' and 'Mother Theresa' and LO, the crystals changed into lots of murky yuckiness! (Not for Mother Theresa obviously)

Music had a similar effect with Beethoven, Tibet Sutras and folk dances making pretty snowflakes and Heavy metal creating.....murky yuckiness,.whoa -water has taste!

Apart from my flippancy, if you look at this from a quantum physics standpoint it's not all that unbelievable, but I'll leave you to do the figuring.

To my way of thinking, if this works, we don't need to recycle water, or build desalination plants. We could all just crowd around Waragamba with some really big sub-woofers and pump out Vaughan Williams while praying to mother Theresa to smite Adolf Hitler 'cos he makes us sick.

Ahhh humanity, we come up with some pretty goddam interesting stuff...now where does one get research grants for this typa thang.......:)

Yule kill babies

Yup, it's that time of year again. Retail outlets groan under the weight of fairy lights, plastic ornaments and thousands of trinkets that nobody needs. Household carbon emissions skyrocket as humans compete with one another as to who can use the most electricity in the tackiest manner and friends and family sit down to eat dead babies.
Oh yes, Christmas is wonderful. I wonder how Christ would feel about his birthday being celebrated via mass murder and desperate consumption? I have trouble imagining Jesus with a Lamb under one be-robed arm and a knife held under it's quivering little neck.
I cannot really reconcile the 'Prince of Peace' smiling benignly as a tottering calf is lead trustingly to the bolt-gun.
Please people, if you have any compassion this Christmas, consider not contributing to the vaults of death and fear this festive season.
Lamb =baby sheep, frightened, torn away from its mother and slaughtered before it knows what life is
Veal -baby cow, as above and locked in a crate, fed a diet deficient in iron for whiter meat, and hacked to pieces.
The worst part of this? Many people will read this blog, laugh uproariously and make a joke about quaffing baby things.
I know you don't want to think about it, but it's time to. If you have any compassion left in you, why not try the amazing array of fruit and vegetable available to us in this country for Christmas? A huge platter of tropical fruits, roast potatoes with rosemary and sea-salt, sweet-potato pate and crackers, French salad with avocado. asparagus, walnuts and nashi pears, green beans with garlic and chilli, roasted cauliflower with garlic pepper, stuffed zucchini (rice, tomato, lentils, spices), glazed pumpkin with toasted almonds and cumin, Lychees drizzled with passionfruit and Grand Marnier, Grilled Flat Mushrooms stuffed with pesto, Char-grilled corn with chilli, Thai rice balls, Polenta and Char-grilled meditteranean veges, Tapioca pudding made with Soy, Rice or almond milk, Sweet-corn and zucchini fritters with fresh tomato salsa, Fried aubergine fritters, Baked tofu stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms, .....
Hunger =stuffed!
Tastebuds = truly overwhlemed
Trans Fats =negligible
Cruelty =none

This is not a difficult concept people. Choose not to contribute to death this Christmas.

Greater Minds Say....

I thought it about time that I shared some of the amazing and inspiring quotes regarding animals that keep me going.
Before I do though, here's an amusing aside: Reading through some short stories written by Yr 7's the other day, I came across a spelling error that made me laugh out loud;

'Homosidle maniac'.

Beware of sneaky Gay men exhibiting maniacal behaviour....(chortle)

'The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men' [Emil Zola 1840-1902]

'The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity.' [George Bernard Shaw 1851-1939]

'Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimetal', you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic', they mean they are going to make money out of it' [Brigid Brophy 1929-1995]

'One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthy of sharing this planet with them. I have a dream...[Martin Luther King].

'If Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only 10% for one year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption -or enough to feed 60 million people...Indeed if Americans were to stop eating grain-fed beef altogether the grain thus released woud be enough to feed all the 600 million people in India' [from 'Animal Liberation'. Peter Singer 1983]

'If man's aspirations towards right living are serious...he will first abstain from animal food because...its use is simply immoral, as it requires the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling -killing' [Leo Tolstoy]

'I for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled form of dead bodies, and claimed as daily foo and dainty dishes what bt now were beings endowed with movement, with perception and with voice' [Plutarch].

'To undertake to lay down universally valid distinctions of value between different kinds of life will end in judging them by the greater or lesser distance at which they stand from us human beings -as we ourselves judge. But that is a purely sunjective criterion. Who amongst us knows what significance any other kind of life has in itself and as part of the universe?' [Albert Schweitzer]

Of course, there are dozens more, but they're my favourites. Happy reading!

....Homosidle....heh heh....

Xx + Xx =Y?

Thankyou David Smiedt, well-known author and betrayer of his own Gender! The following is a reaction to his short story 'Hit and Myth' published in the volume entitled 'Girls Night In 2; Gentlemen by Invitation' Penguin 2001.

As the man himself says (pp 635) 'So here's to playing it straight when it comes to the greatest myths surrounding men's sexual desires plus the experiences we genuinely crave. What you are about to read ain't gonna be pretty....And we're going to uncover new ground in territories of his mind you thought you knew, while exploring the shadowy terrain he'd prefer you didn't wander around in'. Enough for me,-all you have to do is tell me I shouldn't or worse, I'm 'not allowed' and I'm in for a penny/pound/whole goddam bank.

Sub-Heading 'The Threesome Myth' (for interested parties other sub-headings include 'The Myth of the Male G-Spot, The faking orgasm myth, The purely physical myth, The Male wish list, Sorry there's someone in here, Teacher's pet, Penny Pelvis and others...).

Quote: 'As simplistic as it may sound, this means that when there are two naked female bodies together, the combined erotic power is not merely doubled but somehow squared'.
Ok, so men, despite being quite renowned for mathematic and logical reasoning, have been putting up a front all this time. Squared?

Quote: 'The concept of mutual satisfaction is crucial -men always satisfy the women in our fantasies with a deadly mixture of panache, stamina and the type of agility usually reserved for seven-year-old Soviet gymnasts and Shaolin monks'.
Hm, I suspect this is where male and female fantasies part ways. Men like to imagine themselves as greater than their physical limitations in fantasy, women get off on the idea that their pre-existing physical limitations are actually valued and adored in fantasy. i.e. the woman who worries about her fat thighs daily probably fantasises NOT that she has slim and perfect thighs but that her fantasy man LOVES big thighs and sees her as the fulfillment of his own fantasies.

Quote: 'many a man would also stake his claim on a fantasy where he and a woman are making love, but unbeknown to them are being watched by another woman who becomes so filled with lust that she can't help but make more than her presence felt'.
The thing I love about this one is that the male mind can actually believe for the time this fantasy is in play that the women he is making love to will actually be pleased that she now has competition for his attention. Further, that although he is all and everything she could ever desire, she has a little reservoir of lesbian lust that she wants him to witness. The real clanger is the idea that the original woman will be turned on watching her ideal man screwing some other woman in front of her. Newsflash: most women would call this 'betrayal' and run out of the room crying their hearts out.

Quote: 'The, ahem, pulling power is heightened because women are still apparently the more sexually demure gender, and the blatant flaunting of such rule-breaking is powerfully erotic. Especially if the guy involved believes that it's because the female participants want him so badly that they are willing to share him -and each other. This is an ego trip. Pathetic? Yes. Fact? Certainly.'
Want him so badly that we are willing to share him? You mean, have so little sense of our own self-worth and loveability that in order to hold onto the love of this man-among-men, we will give ourselves the equivalent of emotional Bamboo slivers under the nails? Just to make him happy? -I question the emotional viability of a man who wishes this (on any level) to come true. It worries me that a man can know that this behaviour would be an indicator of serious emotional pain for his partner and indulge the fantasy anyway. Are men thinking 'I know this shouldn't happen, and I wouldn't ever want to hurt her, but if I just fantasise about it, she'll never know?'. I guess that's wherethe Christian concept regarding 'thought' sins being as bad as 'actual' sins comes into play. Maybe I'm a closet Christian?-now that's scarier than anything I've written so far...

Wow. Head spin. So, actually, the man standing up there at the altar promising to love you with all his heart till death do you part blah blah, means 'only with the bit of my head I'm gonna tell you about baby, -the rest of me's gonna betray and hurt you again and again and again,-Why? 'cos I'm a man.'
Ok, now Psycho/med babble persona should say 'Fantasy is a normal and healthy part of any sexual relationship'.
I buy that (mostly) but I still wonder why men's fantasies often revolve around dominance and, let's face it, humiliation, either of their actual partners or of other 'actors' (women). I wonder why this induces powerful orgasm. I wonder if there's actually much to love in the shadowy male psyche at all, -or should we all run away screaming?....

'Feel it-make it work'

For those who are not aware of my world-I am, among other things, a trained actor. I am also a very vocal and viruperative opponent to 'method' acting.
For those unaware of the term, it basically describes a process in which the actor's feelings are used as a primary tool both for character building (during the rehearsal process) and for that little bit of 'chutzpah' during performance. i.e. actors feeling an intense emotional state during perfoemance will 'translate' more powerfully to the audience.
I have this to say: actors, it is not your job to 'feel', it is your job to make the audience feel. This often involves a vast amount of crafting and false angles to provide the best 'image' to the v

iewing public.

In addition, what happens when you do a love scene? Do you 'feel' it? How dangerous would that be if you were in a partnership outside of the stage or film relationship? Please, PLEASE consider your craft people. They don't put you through 3 years of training so you can go off on an emotional orgy of self-indulgent 'feeling'. Craft, I suspect, exists because generations of actors had to find a way to keep themselves sane throughout the process.

Ask this question,-would you be as emotionally indulgent if you were playing a murderer? a paedophile? Is it not a matter of choice?

That's my rant. It's a thesis subject, not really suited to the limited space of a blog, but someone's got to say it.

Middle Management; lightweight IQ & PR

OK, so I work at a BP service station to supplement my income while I am studying. This is not a line of work that I particularly enjoy or am especially proud of, but it is convenient to my home and provides the all-important $$ I need to complete my course.

Without blowing my own trumpet, I think that I'm a reliable and hard worker, and I put a great deal of effort into amusing/entertaining and providing great customer service. All would be reasonably peachy were it not for a certain individual-let's just call him Cecil, that struts in once a month or so to make everyone's lives miserable.

Every time this 'person' (and I use the word advisedly) visits, he lets fly an exhausting barrage of everything that is wrong with the lay-out, uniforms, application to the work at hand, and anything else his vicious brain can get a hold of at the time. In fact, his ability to see only negatives is quite awesome in it's own pathetic way.

Did he miss 'Human Resource Management 101'? You know, the one that espouses the nutty idea that people will work harder and better for you if you don't consistently treat them like cockroaches? I guess he was ill the day that they were told that a consistent string of insults is unlikely to elicit better performances from erm...ANYONE, EVER.

I know he missed the memo that stated that all console operators and sundry part-time workers are not flaming morons. I would suggest that he looked up his transcript and tried 'Manners for beginners' and 'Smiling-it only hurts when you don't do it' as extension courses that would improve his chances of not being mauled to death by a lowly sales-person who has had just about enough of this tripe -thankyou very much.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Cecil probably spends his weekends in B&D dens, decked out with leathers whips and chains and a perky little pvc hat insisting that people call him 'General' or 'Mein Fuhrer'. Actually, it is far more likely that he is utterly whipped by his unfortunate partner in life and only gets to be a Big Man when he's at work.

I also love the jaw-dropping hypocrisy that states that the company is an environmentally aware structure that is obsessed with 'Great customer service' while making fat profits from errr PETROLEUM (oh, that was in 'Unsustainable resources 101') and charging people triple mark-ups with a smile and a 'Have a nice day'. Look, sometimes we all have to listen to some company by-line that everyone in the room knows is pure bollocks (especially the poor monkey having to try and convince everyone else) but it is too rich to expect them to actually believe this crud on a minimal (err, sorry 'competitive') wage structure.

And while I'm at it,-a competitive wage structure? There are sweat-shop workers in Borneo that get paid less and treated worse,-certainly. And I'm sure they all have their own 'Cecil's' in on the bargain. Yes, I am fortunate in comparison to many, but right now I'm genuinely peeved and not a little unhappy with my fiscal arrangements. Cecil, I genuinely wish you to slip on a banana peel in a board meeting sometime soon. -That, or I hope some nasty little roach snaps your leather G-string to hard this weekend....